American Saison idea

[Sinkman]

Listen to the BN podcast with Jason Yester of Trinity brewing....

I'll have to track that down. I've heard good things about Trinity.

Update: It's been a week and I may be in the middle of my first stuck fermentation. I know 3711 is a beast and all, but I expected more. So far, the beer has dropped from 1.057 down to 1.030. Ferm seemed pretty robust at first. The fermenter is in an insulated cooler and rose pretty quickly to about 82 degrees, then dropped to 78 and has been there ever since. I pitched a one liter starter from a stir plate.

I have no problem dumping some more yeast in or adding a bit of sugar to get the boys restarted, or even just stirring up that cake. Or all three! I just don't know if this famously finnicky yeast just needs more time to catch up.

Any thoughts?

 

[DannPM]

Sinkman, how much yeast did you pitch? I've never heard of 3711 ever getting stuck.

 

[boostsr20]

Sinkman, how much yeast did you pitch? I've never heard of 3711 ever getting stuck.

Same here and I've used it a lot. Thats very odd. Double check your hydrometer in some water.

 

[Prionburger]

Yeah, I've never had 3711 get stuck. I've underpitched with it, and gave it horrible temperature control, yet it still finished attenuating my beer.

I'm not a huge fan of 3711's flavor profile though. Not enough banana or phenols or pepper.

As for the saison I brewed last night:

6 gallon batch:

11 Lbs belgian pilsner that was milled and sat on the table for 4 weeks
4oz cane sugar for giggles

mashed at 145f for 1.5 hours, raised it to 155 for the last 10 minutes to speed conversion up.

90 minute boil

1oz 5.3% Willamette at 60 minutes
1.5oz 7% Cluster at knock out
0.5oz 5.3% Willamette at knock out

Should come out at about 30ibus

OG was 1.053. Pitched 250ml thin slurry harvested the day of from my first clusterized Saison. Gave it 2 minutes of pure O2. Pitched at 69f.

This morning I checked it, and the yeast was already about to crawl out of the airlock, so I put yet another blowoff tube on it. Weird that WLP566 does this when 3724, 3725, and 3711 don't.

 

[DannPM]

Banana esters in a saison? Yuck! Does that white labs strain put out a lot of isoamyl acetate(sp)?

 

[Prionburger]

Not sure... Maybe it was more in the bubblegum realm of flavors. I'm definitely not getting as much perceived banana as with 1214 (which I love).

WLP566 definitely has more fruit going on than 3711, though.

 

[Sinkman]

Heh. Totally off. I used 3724. In any case, I used a 1L starter. Starter was going pretty hot when I dumped it in.

On testing today, I was greeted with 1.020. I gave the brew a little stir and figured it would continue its business. It was actually warmer in there today, up to 80 again. It seems to be bubbling every ten seconds or so. I'll likely just let it rest and leave it alone. Forget about the secondary. Three more weeks in primary can't hurt, right?

In other news, my search for Saison Dupont at my local store was met with no Saison, but some excellent new brews from Mikkeler. At the risk oh hijacking the thread, has anybody else tasted their Black Hole series?